Would a plant by any other name stink so bad?
An extremely rare corpse flower dramatically bloomed at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden Friday for the first time in Big Apple history — unleashing a putrid aroma of rotten flesh throughout the otherwise perfumey institution.
The striking and stinky plant — which members have dubbed “Smelliot” — burst open around 11:30 a.m. before an excited crowd of gawkers, many of whom promptly plugged their noses.
An Amorphophallus gigas bloomed for the first time in Big Apple history on Friday. Stefano Giovannini“I came in at 7 a.m., and I could already smell it in the hallway,” Patrick Austin, a plant propagator and nursery gardener at BBG, told The Post.
“It’s really, really cool. It’s really exciting.”
The monumental blooming marks the first time an Amorphophallus gigas — a plant native to Sumatra and lovingly nicknamed the corpse flower — has opened its petals at the Crown Heights garden.
It is the very first of its kind to ever bloom in all of New York City, the garden proudly confirmed.
A constant stream of visitors swept through the garden’s aquatic house Friday to catch a glimpse — and a whiff — of the history-making plant. Most adults were good about embracing the stench, though children quickly covered their noses, Austin observed.
The eager crowd compared the aroma to “Canal Street on a summer day” or “hot garbage.”
The flower started to emit “rotten flesh” smells earlier this month, tipping gardens off to the blooming. Stefano Giovannini“It smells like the mammal house at the zoo. Like when the animals go poopy. It smells like poop,” Trang Nguyen, who lives in the area and came with her friend to see the plant, told The Post.
“I enjoyed looking at it. I can’t say I enjoyed smelling it but I’m here.”
Several visitors were members of the garden who had been closely following Smelliot’s journey and pounced at the opportunity to see the blooming in person.
“Absolutely lived up to it. I’ve been eyeing that thing for a while,” Meagan Coyle said after the viewing.
The so-called Corpse Flower is roughly 6-feet-tall. Instagram/Brooklyn Botanic Garden“I’ll be back again tomorrow too. Every day it gets a little bit bigger, it’s really exciting.”
Nathan Noland, a member of 10 years, put it simply: “I’ve been stalking this plant.”
Michael Danziger of Greenpoint rushed to the garden on Friday to see the gigas on behalf of his significant other, who was out of the country and was, unfortunately, going to miss the short-lived blossoming.
“I’m not on social media so my significant other sent me a link saying it was blooming … so I was tasked for seeing it for the both of us,” Danziger said, adding that he became aware of the plant several years ago when it was much smaller.
The plant burst open around 11:30 a.m. as an excited crowd emerged at the scene. Stefano Giovannini“In terms of hype, it smells pretty terrible. It was like a combination of cardboard and fish. Kind of like parts of Canal Street on a summer day.”
While this is the first blooming for the rare “giga” variety of corpse flower, the Brooklyn garden in 2006 celebrated the blossoming of a similar, equally stinky, relative, the Amorphophallus titanium. It marked the first blooming of that kind of plant in seven decades.
The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx also one of the titanium plants bloom in 2023.
“The gigas are a lot less common in cultivation, so that’s cool. It’s a little more unusual to see in a botanic garden,” explained Austin, who planted the flower when it arrived at BBG seven years ago.
This specific plant is the first of its kind to ever bloom in all of New York City Stefano GiovanniniOnly ten botanical gardens around the globe have their own Amorphophallus gigas, making Friday’s bloom an extremely rare treat for New Yorkers.
Even more rare than the plant itself is how infrequently it blooms. Corpse flowers can take anywhere between a couple of years and a decade to open.
BBG staff had a feeling the monumental flower was itching to bloom earlier this month when its steady vertical growth started to slow down.
At first, staffers thought the cold spell might have played a role — until the growth stopped almost altogether.
Plus, Smelliot started emitting a dull foul stench, a hard-to-miss harbinger of what was to come.
“It’s stinkiest right when it opens, which is to attract its pollinators like flies and beetles [that eat dead animals]. That’s why it smells like rotting flesh,” explained Austin.
The awesome spectacle will only be on display for a few days — the corpse flower will fold itself back up and shed its petals by next week.
BBG has already seen an uptick in foot traffic through the gardens over the last week, with every visitor stopping through the aquatic house to catch a glimpse of the super rare flower.
